21.5.13

I cannot find the words to describe my sorrow and indignation over what has happened and what lies in store should hathazari bounce back and rise again. Maybe we will meet on the planes of Arafat and discuss this eventually. Allahumma grant those who won't be returning to their families a place in the hearts of green birds near His Throne.

Dear Mir Quasem Ali

Of the party leaders detained and accused it is your diganta infrastructure that points to the future. We pray for you all, and for justice and that we might have the privaledge of knowing what the f@£k happened over those previous years. 69 to 72.

Most bloody expensive hobnobbing ever right?

Dear Mahmudur Rahman.

Our very own Julian Assange minus the rape allegations. May your wounds heal. If you were here in London I would invite you to our reading group and we could work on the non tribal religious language and decoloniality. Still. They would have arrested you regardless as you held the only press to challenge theur crown jewels.

Dear Delwar Hussein,

I read your party's dossier on you and wish you healing, freedom and guidance. Its a downright shame that you inherit unjust stigma and thus serve as the lightning rod for Awami hate and brutality. I have given up hoping for an answer to the shibbir violence problem.

We're still looking for that higher gear.

***

We need a more open and inclusive ummahstructure to make space for alternatives to the DJ juice degeneration.

The government of Bangladesh holds unbridled power, and its supporting media- industrial-NGO complex has the people in a triple bind.

The brutal events of May 6th are a sign of things to come. As Awami minded denial shifts to just desertification.

If our Islamist brothers were to find themselves in power tomorrow it probably would be a disaster, not for fault of Islam, but people and the lack of Tawhesion. This is not a secular position but a basic form of training and political due diligence.

The secular liberal hegemony over political space, the right to audience and debate is a problem.

The conditions for faith, life, intellect, dignity, lineage and property are what our activism should be about. These higher objectives of Sharia must come to the foreground in what we say and do.

Whatever happened to the religious left?

There needs to be a moratorium on hartals and a rise in explorations of the political street theater of love.

20.5.13

The Internet upload throttle idea has been shelved by the Bangladesh government in favor of a ban on a month-long ban on all forms of meetings, processions and demonstrations. The reasons given by the government range from 'law and order' to smoothing relief and rehabilitation work in the wake of cyclone Mahasen. Bloggers are not a much of a threat, street politics however is.

Whats there to protest about?
Following the Savar garments factory disaster, the brutal government clampdown on religious protesters that ended in a massacre on the 6th May, and a longer term brutality on protest at the unfairness of the War Crimes Tribunal, there certainly is a lot to be angry and organise about in Bangladesh. Not least in the garments factories of Ashulia, where workers are asserting their legitimate rights to a better life and non-exploitation by garments owners who can run up to 40 % profit margins on their backs.

International and national outrage at the garments sector has been Superficiality as Usual, clearing the way for Business as Usual for the government's war on workers rights. Last week a 19 year old sewing machinist operator Parul Akhter was found dead in the factory bathroom, in what the police say was a suicide. Workers were angered by this, and underlying conditions enough to agitate and compel factories owners to declare 'Holiday'.

Beyond Media Monitoring
Note how the Daily Star devotes much coverage to the reasonable factory owner and the factory owners lobby group, and the workers are represented as a baying mob not fit for quoting. The Hameem Group, which owns the factory also runs the pro-government Samakal newspaper. The need for independent, and socially committed coverage in Ashulia is the demand of the times. It would be great if some of the crocodile tears over Savar would translate into it.

the international human rights infrastructure prefers its victims angelic liberal and without back story

media people like to make spectacles, collaborate with their clones and are lazy

photographers peer at politics over the shoulders of the police, or between their legs

the development industry talks about the practical, but runs away from the political

feel-good imagery and storytelling from the Savar disaster is used to bury even badder news.

between third rate journalism, selfish and complicit activism, not enough is being done to connect the dots, here are some dots.

Relieving political violence, or cloaking violence with relief?
Government minister Syed Ashraful Islam's attempt to crown the latest strategy with relief is par for the course in a country where much of the middle and ruling class are part of an intellectually and politically paralysing complex called Developmentshire.

Developmentshire is a series of relationships that is maintained when powerful agendas collude to 'develop' others. It is particularly strong and full of BS in Bangladesh, where selling and (not)solving poverty is a lucrative industry, with minor but increasing mIslamist participation. In recent months and days it has proven deadly, having been complicit in making the mood music and covering up for government brutality on religious protests. It can be quite funny|tragic to see when you encounter it, and should be delegitimised in the public interest.

This way of looking at the development industry, for what it is rather than what it says, helps us to understand networks of power. As the power elites of Bangladesh scramble to cling onto power and prevent us from knowing what they are really doing, is it in the public interest to know about their mutually beneficial arrangements with the development industry. After all, a comfortable job in an air conditioned office is a safe, unassailable place for an apprenticeship in bullshit, and who better than a member of the ruling dynasty to play the role of the Native Informant?

Some media editors finally resist the government's clampdown, but not the Dhaka Tribune
Yesterday, 15 newspaper editors and a web portal editor signed a letter demanding the release of Amar Desh editor Mahmudur Rahman , the restoration of Amar Desh, as well as the reopening of Diganta TV and Islamic TV which were shut down for their live coverage of government brutality at Motijheel.

In a time of political contestation this cannot be read as a simple managerial issue targeting illegal Voice over IP traffic. It is very timely for the government in that it hinders further video uploads of its atrocities and creative engagement with the internet.

Founder of Diganta TV Mir Quasem Ali has now been in government detention for nearly 1 year.

Diganta TV and Islamic TV have been shut down for daring to screen live footage of the massacre in Dhaka on 6th May.

YouTUbe

Friends of social media are increasingly guarded over speaking about May 6th events, unless they have spine.

English language papers like The Daily Star and The Dhaka Tribune, continue to proudly fly the government cause and flag.

The Facebook opposition group Basherkella has been closed down and restarted several times in recent months.

BBC Bengali service is shamelessly spinning for the government regarding the story of finding prosecution-turned defence witness Shokronjan Bali in an Indian Jail. The RAW-BBC-Daily Star axis has aligned against the David Bergman-New Age-Human Rights Watch-Al Jazeera axis on this.

What to do

Don't waste bandwidth repeating stuff, make every character count.

Find workarounds. Preserve anonymity.

Migrate to blogs from facebook.

Pay attention to dirty tricks.

Rather than video, use still images connected with text.

Challenge the authorities that made this possible

The ability to reflect, organise and enact ideas is fundamental to living and learning and Creation > Consumption

16.5.13

Suppression of the news of the Bangladesh government's brutal action against religious protesters on May 6th is slowly fading, but the rearguard action is well underway.

This Dhaka grave digger had no hearing or speech, but still told the truth about the bodies he buried that night.
Lord protect him and inspire us with his morality.

With a welcome, surprisingly balanced but lateAl Jazeera news piece on Tuesday (14th May), the government-leaning human rights organisation Ain o Salish Kendra (ASK) finally made a statement today (16th May), ten days after the killings. By contrast, the pro-opposition Odhikar made its first statement on 7th May. The ASK statement pasted below concentrates of entrenching government propaganda and red herrings, here it is below.

Statement on the website of ASK a prominent human rights organisation and gatekeeper.
The date of the web page is 16th May, though the Bengali version carries a date of 13th.

Just a single line out of a twenty line alludes to any wrongdoing on the government's behalf. Mark Regev would be proud of this one. For context, this organisation is headed by award winning human rights activist Sultana Kamal (satirised here), an expert witness in the discredited War Crimes Tribunals, and former advisor to the Caretaker Government that assumed power after the 2007 military coup.

Come, visit Bangladesh, where covering, covering up and recovering injustice is perhaps the biggest industry.

Who's Human Rights?
It should be noted that despite the rhetoric and funding, human rights are not for all in Bangladesh, but usually a for strategic and unchallenging few as well as the cameras. Although the 6th May Motijheel Massacre bears witness to many ills in Bangladeshi society, the most striking is of a donor-fattened corporate NGO class that is self-serving and incapable of seeing common humanity through its narrow ideological worldview. Such selective humanitarianism it important to call out loudly and internationally, as its sub-national and transnational politics is often glossed over and erased by its privileged native informants.

Framing the dead, diplomatically

Foreign Minister Dipu Moni is on a damage control

On the government front, there is a big external public relations push by the establishment, with Bangladesh Foreign Minister Dr Dipu Moni holding the brief of presenting the Government's point of view. In her contribution to the recent Al Jazeera news piece she accuses injured and petrified demonstrators of pretending to be dead and getting up when poked by security forces.

Dr Moni, the international mouthpiece of this callous regime, is busy in the USA of late, addressing the party faithful (in Bangla) among the New York Bangladeshi diaspora, on Monday and scheduled in Washington DC to meet Secretary of State John Kerry tomorrow (17th). As 'US Ambassador-at-large for War Crimes' Stephen Rapp has been in Bangladesh over the past few days talking to people, it is difficult to know whether this meeting will be to receive further instructions or a scolding.

One can anticipate the Awami League government doing what it does best, accusing its opposition of what it is accused of by them, and playing the bulwark against fundamentalism. I cannot stand this injustice, can you?

13.5.13

12.5.13

This still is taken from a video uploaded by the Bangladeshi cyber activist group Basherkella, who run a very resilient Facebook group which had been shut down and revived to grow stronger many times in the course of the government clampdown. They are closer to the ground than any media, but their lack of editorial process can cause problems. Tough work for young men, probably boys, who have been hounded for the past 4 years and are probably on the run.

The image's time stamp is 2:42 on the video. I believe its of a scene from the national mosque in Dhaka, Baitul Mukkarram, which means House of the Honoured. Here the camera(phone) sweeps sadly through the aftermath of the brutal attack of government security forces and ruling party militia on religious demonstrators on 5th and 6th of May.

You can feel the past lingering in the space, the desperate escape of terrified people brutalised by their government. Many people breathed their last here. I know this mosque, I have prayed in it, bought books from it got lost around it and gazed at it in the way that a Musalman approaches a place of prostration.

Allahumma grant them the highest places in Your Garden, accept them as those who have bourne witness and console there grieving loved ones.

Still bodies, some wet with blood, others mangled on the steps surrounded by sandals strewn across the mosque along with piles of bamboo canes, the odd prayer hat and a gaggle members of the stone hearted Rapid Action Battalion. Then an adidas bag...... and a motorcycle.

This confirms eyewitness reports that speak of motorcycle attacks by pro government militias on demonstrators seeking refuge in the House of the Honoured. This isn't the first time the Mosque has been attacked, but perhaps the worst time so far. I know that the terrified stories of that day may never make it into the international news media, which will normally be guided by Bangladeshi gatekeepers who feel in their hearts of hearts that these men young and old 'deserved it'.

***

Responsibility for these killings and the whole disaster lie in a few different places.

The Awami League Government, and those who planned this

Those who pulled triggers and executed this

The media and NGO actors that helped to create the mood music for this, from Mahfuz Anam and Zafar Sobhan of the Daily Star and the Dhaka Tribune, to Sultana Kamal, of Aino Salish Kendro, who only believe human rights are due to people like them.

The Shahbag warriors who wound them up the Islamic Establishment, framed them as extremists, and spat on them as they died. I have been blogging on Bangladesh and other matters for about 9 years now, and never thought I would see the time where voices like @rezwan would be serving as government mouth pieces, apologists for crimes so horrific and a vindictiveness unbecoming of one who has authority in the GlobalVoices space. Shahbag has been corrosive on an already corroded set of people.

The Bangladeshi gatekeepers in international organisations who are covering things up, Sabir Mustafa at thd BBC and Anushey Hussein of Aljazeera, daughter of Anwar Hussein Manju, leaders of a faction of a nationalist party himself.

Those who used them as lambs to the slaughter.

***

There are tough self-ward questions to ask of those who marketed the Hefazot action as an opportunity to bring down the government, and those who persuaded them to stay. Who could have known that this level of ultra violence would be meted out to them?

Rewind a few days to the hype and there were stupid promotional videos that were definitely not hefazots. Hefazot didn't even have the english language infrastructure in place to properly explain their points to the world. Simultaneously KONYing Occupy and Springtime must have taken little thought for the do gooder neoliberal musalmaniacs, who were say thousands of miles away.

Another tough question that springs to mind thinking about the bamboo sticks that Hefazot brought for protection. Has Basherkella become a self fulfilling prophesy? Due to political inexperience in dealing with the power holder Titu Mir's original bamboo fort was destroyed in a hail of colonial gunfire. Darwing on that cultural resource

***

Why hasn't the Prime Minister addressed the nation on this important matter? Has she shat in her sari?

What are the names of the dead, and what are their stories?

What did they do with all the bodies?

How will the perpetrators be brought to trial?

Will the Bangladeshi people just sit and take this lying down?

Why are foreign governments providing cover?

How were the 13 points arrived at?

Will international, independent investigators be dispatched to Bangladesh?

What will unfold in Dhaka tomorrow?

Who cares about these generally poor people and poor people's sons?

Who will rise to the challenge of putting this fucked up country back together again?

Will we make the same mistakes as the 1971 exploiters, or will we honour the martyrs with another, deeper and wider kind of justice?

Is a place where the religious are denigrated, their scholars killed like flies, and their national mosque stormed by gangsters on motorcycles backed by police, in anyway 'Muslim'.

10.5.13

Def: The inability to comprehend that which one has not cultivated the mind for.

Epistemic Autism is a problem in multi-disciplinary research collaboration, complex organisational management as well as political life.

The seculibs of Bangladesh, who wear liberalism to secure white privilege, have so little knowledge of islamic dynamic culture, that their misframing of Hefazot-e-Islam has translated into the Motijheel Massacre.

Unable to distinguish students of Maulana Madani from Maulana Moududi, and dismissive of anybody able to, their inhumanity, arrogance and shamelessness continues to corrupt intellectual, organisational and justice-making for everybody else.

My warning to dear readers is that this is not for children and will cause your heart to quiver. Denial and exaggeration are both wrong, so I am posting these videos so you can see for yourself, understand and be moved towards justice.Police brutality against protesters during the day of 5th May

Police firing into unarmed crowds, Beating, possibly killing protesters as they lay writhing on the ground.

Police brutality against protesters during the early hours of 6th May

Police firing into unarmed crowds, denying medical attention and killing people. Rapid Action Battalion-2 very much involved. Testimony from two of the injured.

Watch us wrap our middle class guilt over Begum Reshmi who by the grace of Allah and no one else, survived 17 days under the rubble of the Awami league gangster's building that was rented by brac bank and callous garments factories and built dangerously on the land of a Hindu uncle of ours, whose home was looted in the ruins.

We entomb her in tyranny, concrete and mangled steel, then have the audacity to feel good at her 'resilience'.

To some, who will know who they are, I have this to say. No you aren't good, and you have no right to feel good, you callous and bloody minded people who cry crocodile tears but actually have a very limited sympathy for fellow humans as we see in your complicity in the cover up of police brutality just down the road in motijheel. #justsaying

8.5.13

A terrible sorrowful atrocity has occurred in Bangladesh. It is being covered up so I'm putting together this resource page to make a stable reference point.

There was a massacre of religious protesters at 245am Sunday 5th May around the Water Lily statue in Motijeel, Dhaka's business district. Massive force was used, 10 000 personnel, a whole range of weaponry and darkness.

The deed was committed by a mixture of armed forces: the Bangladesh Police, the Bangladesh Border Guards and the Rapid Action Battalion, which is notorious for 'crossfire'. For the record, the Border Guards have a grisly history, they mutinied a few years ago killing many officers and their families. There will also have been involvement from armed Awami League aligned thugs, like Sohel Rana, whose building collapse killed more than 600 people so recently.

These articles probably appeal to those with time and inclination to read. They may have appeal to nerds like me, and hopefully institutions out there in the world, but in these fast times of facebook timelines and skepticism documentary images have a grounding role to play.
Like. Share. RT. Forward.

Pictures
If you have a Flickr account Feb28.com have a picture library here. This group came into being following an earlier government killing spree. Know that there is danger in looking at these with a heart that yearns for The Spectacle, The Numbers Game and The Competition of Cruelties. These are humans, and what remains, they are sacred and having a sense of the sacred resists the commodification of suffering that neo-liberal capitalism drives. I believe these are innocent men killed in the act of protest against a hegemonic and morally bankrupt regime. It is staggering, that many Bangladeshis, like those on the Blogger and Online Activist Network are still at the point of arguing that these kinds images are all photo shopped, fake and conspiratorial. But think about the dominant national indoctrination processes and narrow historical spoon feeds and it makes more sense.

Pictures tell us a frozen snapshot, whereas human stories go right into us.

Videos
In the video below, a taxi driver secretly films a policeman involved in the massacre,
the policeman describes his view and when the driver asks him if he
feels bad, he expresses no remorse. I pray for the safety of this taxi
driver.

Sometimes people want to hear someone like them tell them the story. In this video log from Dhaka Medical Hospital, A north American development worker, not known for holding sympathies with 'Muslim extremists' bravely puts his life on the line to report on the dead and the dying.

In the last video there are no people, just their blood stains. Lord grant them healing, high station and forgiveness, make us better protection for each other.

This didn't come out of the blue, we saw it coming but the Shahbag spectacle over the past few months was a successful diversion of energy. The government has been arresting non compliant media heads for some time. (Mir Quasem, Mahmudur RAhman). Shortly after the killing spree, the UK-trained Rapid Action Battalion seized the transmitters and shut down Diganta TV and Islamic TV.

The international media is appalling, and embarrassingly it is secular
liberal gatekeepers of Bangladeshi origin are falsely spinning this
story in the BBC (Sabir Mustafa) and Aljazeera (@ShamiminLondon). Just
enough to secure indifference for brown men with beards far away who
dont play liberal.

From facebook I learn that much of the Dhaka urban middle class is in denial. There is a tendency to turn this into a commodified spectacle of numbers and heart crushing imagery of human savagery. The Shahbag aligned have decided that the massacre is all about denying their movement and are acting accordingly. The most prominent facebook group detailing the atrocity, Basher Kellah, is inspired by the Bamboo Fort of Titu Mir, the political-religious reformer who battled landlords and colonialism. It is in dire need of an editorial policy. To be a foolish friend is sometimes worse than being an enemy.

From my point of view I find confirmation that the secular liberal intelligentsia's hegemony is a big, deadly problem. I hope others can see this. Some say they want evidence and without evidence they can't do anything. Sadly, they do not require such evidence when accusing Islamists of heinous crimes with no proper investigation. Crookery, like selective humanitarianism, is rife, especially in the Daily Star, the new Dhaka Tribune, and the Ain o Salish Kendro human rights group.

I call on junior journalists to revolt and leak like Bradley Manning did.

What saddens me even more is how these alien powers in the capital do not regard the religious protesters as proper human beings, have misframed them and their demands, dehumanised them and made it possible for the government to brush-fire them while they prayed and slept in the dark

Some say that Hasina Wajed's government could not have done this without outside approval, and maybe India, USA and/or the UK had some role in this murderous foolishness. After the last coup I wouldn't be surprised. Yet the fact remains that the primary political control rod rests with us, the Bangladeshis, whatever that means anymore.

What shall be done?

Learn how to argue uphill against both brown and white prejudices

Help spread the story, out of respect those who wont be returning to their homes and families and people in future

Engage Awami League School forces in principled debate with superior information and argument.

Lobby elected representatives

Contest unfair reporting

Call out intellectual crooks who infantalise and mislead our people.

Think carefully and creatively about what to do next

Do not allow Hasina, Foreign Minister Dipu Moni, Home Minister Alamgir and company to travel the world without meeting protest.

Prevent desperate Bangladeshi MPs from looting public resources in the last days of their government through their diplomatic privileges.

6.5.13

Yesterday Hefazot-e-Islam (deshi deobandis) and friends marched back to Dhaka to press for their 13 points one month after the Long March which went surprisingly peacefully. I have written about the points in detail in a separate post, yesterdays points were slightly reformulated and included the protection of religious minorities this time. Sadly this time, the government lashed out a full armoury of police, paramilitaries and thugs with deadly effect. Hundreds may have been killed.

Hundreds of thousands, if not a million protesters turned up in a show of seriousness and desire to have their legitimate concerns widely recognised. TalukdarShaheb has published a photoblog of the day as he saw it.

Police, the disgraced and rebranded Border Guards and ruling party aligned thuds, shot at and beat protesters in the day, and in the wee hours of the morning today appear to have prosecuted a massacre in the business district of Motijhil. A friend, by no means an Islamist (...yet) has told me enough from the scene for me not to be able to write it off as bluster from any of the three cyber groups, Basherkella, SaveBangladesh or Feb28.org.

The crackdown has been systematic. The British-trained Rapid Action Battalion has raided and closed Diganta TV and Islam TV channels. I am told that plain-clothes intelligence agents are keeping the countries madrassas under constant surveillance. The Secular liberal establishment, do not regard the attacked as human beings and are too lazy to push back the hand that fed them all their lives.

We might not agree with the protests demands completely but the right to life, assemble, protest and dignity are non negotiable. It is a shame that most human rights warriors in Bangladesh are cowards and strategic with it comes to standing up for the oppressed.

What is to be done and who is to do it?
As ever it depends on our knowledge, position and location.